For that very reason, we started writing these System Buying Guides a few years back. We have three categories of Buying Guides: Budget, Mainstream and Performance. Our Budget Guide has a spending limit of $650, the Mainstream limit is $1,200 and we allocate $2,000 for our Performance Guide.

AMD sponsors budget system ..... how about telling me on both sides.
No mention of Vista. I know some people don't like it. But, we are the high tech advance troopers, right? On one hand, we talk DX10, Quad Core, high FSB, three steps ahead of chip maker's memory speed requirement.

Any new system must include Vista; because 90% consumers buying OEM PCs and laptops are using Vista except the guru world people.